Definition
An archaic procedural term from English common law practice describing the act of a plaintiff formally abandoning or withdrawing an action in open court before the bar — that is, before the court as constituted — typically by announcing the discontinuance of the suit. The phrase captures the literal physical and ceremonial dimension of early court practice, in which the bar (the physical railing separating the bench and counsel from the public gallery) served as the boundary within which formal legal proceedings took place. To "go through the bar" was, in effect, to conduct a formal act of renunciation or submission before the court in its official capacity.
The term is closely associated with the entry of a nolle prosequi or a retraxit, both of which could be effected through this ceremony, though the precise effect depended on which form of withdrawal was employed. A retraxit, notably, operated as a bar to future actions on the same cause; a simple discontinuance did not carry the same conclusive effect.
Common Confusion
GOING THROUGH THE BAR / NOLLE PROSEQUI / RETRAXIT: These three terms all describe forms of abandonment of a prosecution or civil action, and historical sources sometimes use them loosely. The distinctions matter for research. A nolle prosequi is a formal entry by the prosecuting party that it will not pursue the matter further, but it is not necessarily a final judgment on the merits. A retraxit is a formal, open-court withdrawal that does operate as a final judgment and bars relitigation. "Going through the bar" is the ceremonial procedural act by which either of these could be accomplished — it describes the how, not the legal consequence.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is effectively extinct in modern American practice. Researchers encountering it in historical sources — particularly pre-twentieth century case reports, English common law digests, and early American treatises — should treat it as a procedural description rather than a term of art with surviving doctrinal content.
The phrase is a useful marker of the formalism of early common law pleading practice, where physical and ceremonial acts in open court carried legal significance distinct from written filings. When you encounter "going through the bar" in a historical record, the immediate research question is what legal act was being accomplished by it — withdrawal, discontinuance, or the entry of a retraxit — because the consequences varied significantly.
Researchers working in early chancery records or nisi prius proceedings should note that practice in those courts differed from common law courts, and the same language may not carry identical meaning across judicial contexts. Colonial American practice also imported English forms imperfectly, and local variations in how withdrawals were recorded complicate cross-jurisdictional comparison of early case materials.
The term has essentially no modern counterpart as a phrase, though the underlying procedural acts (voluntary dismissal, nolle prosequi) survive in transformed statutory and rule-based forms across American jurisdictions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define the term in connection with the formal practice of a plaintiff appearing at the bar of the court to withdraw or renounce an action, linking it to the concepts of retraxit and discontinuance. Their treatment situates the term firmly in English common law procedure and carries the implicit assumption that readers understand the physical architecture and ceremony of the common law courtroom.
Older English law dictionaries in the tradition of Jacob and Tomlin treat the bar itself — as a physical and conceptual location — at length, which provides useful context for understanding why "going through the bar" had procedural significance: the bar was the threshold of formal judicial authority, and acts performed there had a public, witnessed, and therefore legally operative character that acts performed elsewhere (in chambers, by correspondence) did not.
What historical sources largely do not address is the transition: at what point this ceremonial formalism was displaced by written practice and codified procedure. The nineteenth-century American procedural reforms associated with the Field Code and its successors made much of this ceremonialism obsolete, replacing it with written motions and formal docket entries. The historical dictionaries thus capture a snapshot of practice that was already fading at the time of their publication.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is a product of English common law and carried into early American practice by inheritance. It has no current statutory or rule-based form in any American jurisdiction. Researchers should consult jurisdiction-specific procedural histories when attempting to trace how and when the underlying practices were formally superseded by modern code pleading.